Humility is an attitude of honesty toward all reality. It is not self-depreciation, which is a neurotic tendency, but the truth. It is the conviction of being created out of nothing and of being gratuitously redeemed. Those are the two theological principles on which true humility, in the Christian sense, is based.

Reflect a moment on the way a newborn child begins to experience reality. As it looks around at things, it does not distinguish one from another. It does not know the difference between fire and water until it tries them out. It does not prefer something beautiful to something ugly, because it has not yet started to analyze the difference. It enjoys the act of seeing and does not worry about what it is seeing. This great art of enjoying the very act of seeing without distinguishing what is seen is a quality of the enjoyment of reality that God means us to retain all our life long. This does not mean, of course, that we cannot also begin to distinguish and analyze, but we should not distinguish and analyze so much that we can no longer enjoy the simple pleasures of life, such as those which emerge from the very act of doing them. The educational process in Western culture makes sure that we lose this basic and primeval kind of enjoyment as soon as possible by creating in us the need and desire to analyze everything--to reduce all experience to logic, cause and effect relationships, utility, efficiency, and profit.

Humility of heart is the capacity just to be for the sake of God. He called us into being. What more could one ask than the enjoyment of it? We did not ask for it; we did nothing to attain it. It is; and yet we cannot fully enjoy it without humility of heart. We always want to know, "What am I going to do with this being? Do I like it or don't I?" We are able to ask this question because we are free to be. And that freedom is what distinguishes us from the rest of material creation.

One way of entering into this fundamental Christian attitude is to learn once again what it means just to be--to allow ourselves to rest before God with the being he gave us, with no other intention, effort, or purpose, except to surrender that being back to him. This is the orientation of contemplative prayer and the ultimate purpose of every genuine spiritual exercise. Our part is to prepare our faculties to become interiorly quiet until thoughts about God are no longer as important to us as the mystery of God's presence. Our part is to identify with that deep pervasive peace, and not to want to do anything else--not even to brush away the superficial distractions that pass through our mind. This orientation of contemplative prayer is the closest thing to the experience of being, short of God's drawing us into union with himself. We cannot bring this union about, but we can prepare ourselves to receive it, by learning again just to be before God.

Humility of heart is not only just to be. It is also the spontaneous capacity just to do. One cannot just do until he has first learned just to be. It is out of that experience of just being that one can then be content with the joy of just doing. Just doing does not mean that one does not have a purpose, does not think, does not plan. But in imposing one's will and intentions on reality and on events, one does not lose the basic experience and joy of just doing. As a child retains the joy of just seeing as it learns to distinguish between the various things that it sees, so we must be able to do without losing the capacity to judge. Our problem is that we get wrapped up in what we are doing and why we are doing it--analyzing it, planning, worrying about it--so that we lose the joy that is always available--of just doing.

Just to be, just to do--these are the two great gifts of God, the foundations of every other gift. We need to return to these two great capacities again and again and cultivate them. The events of daily life need to be placed in perspective by a deep sense of prayer, by learning how to be before God. Then, as reality comes in upon us, we will perceive each event as the working of the Holy Spirit, carefully designed for our particular needs. Every event is a touch of the living finger of God, which is sketching in us--body, soul, and spirit--the true image of his Son, the being that the Father originally gave us and which he is restoring.

If we want to be anything other than what God has made us to be, we are wasting our time. It will not work. The greatest accomplishment in life is to be what we are, which is God's idea of what he wanted us to be when he brought us into being; and no ideas of ours will ever change it. Accepting that gift is accepting God's will for us, and in its acceptance lies the path to growth and ultimate fulfillment.

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Excerpted from The Heart of the World by Fr. Thomas Keating

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